WEBVTT - The Status of Flatus 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.600 Works dot Com. Hey guys, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.000 your mind. This is Julie Douglas and not with us 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:20.439 today is Robert Lamb, who unfortunately is suffering from a 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.919 really kind of horrendous case of laryngitis. So that is 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.000 why you do not hear his dulcet tones today. So 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.240 we thought we would rerun a favorite of hours for 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.159 you guys if you haven't heard it before. It is 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:38.560 all about wind breaking. That's right, farts. The status afflatus 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.760 is the actual name of this episode, and we hope 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:43.920 that you guys enjoy it. But before we get into 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.440 it and we get into the why and the how 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:49.000 of farts, I want to mention that there have always 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.880 been historically champions of windbreaking. Yes, I am talking about 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.240 Jonathan Swift, a master of satire and the author of 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:00.000 Gulliver's Travels. Well. He wrote an essay titled The Benefit 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.480 of Farting Explained. This was published in seventeen twenty two, 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.960 and in it he says it is translated into English 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.399 at the request and for the use of the Lady 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:14.920 damp Fart or her fought Shire by Obadiah Fizzle groom 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:19.479 of the stool to the Princess of us Many in Sardinia. Ah, 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.120 there you go. And we also had Benjamin Franklin, who 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:24.319 in seventeen eighty one, when he found out that the 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.320 Royal Academy at Brussels was requesting a scientific essay and 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.320 would award prizes for the best papers, he said, Hey, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.679 here's an essay urging the Academy to discover some drug 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.640 wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:43.240 food or sauces that shall render the natural discharges of 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:50.600 wind from our bodies not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes. Alright, folks, 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:52.680 I think that's evidence enough that we've been thinking about 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.680 this topic for a long time, and that people have 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.920 been rethinking it in terms of it being not so 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:02.200 bad of a thing, pretty natural, right in According to 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:06.600 Dr Patricia Raymond, she's an assistant professor of Clinical and 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.600 internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. She says, 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.360 if you pass gas, in most cases, you're eating more 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.920 healthfully than your friends who aren't passing gas, or at 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.160 least as much, I suppose, And she says that it 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.920 should be a badge of honor. So wind break on, 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:28.560 my friends, wind break on, Julie. What does a fire 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.560 breathing dragon have to do with the human digestion system? 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:33.760 A lot, it turns out, in fact, it has a 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.720 lot to do with gas and belching. And you guys 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.079 know that we we promised that we would roll out 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:44.240 an episode about inflate us, about gas, the toots parts, 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:46.680 you name it. If you promised, it was like a 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.560 blood oath to our listeners that we would do a 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.280 fart episode. But no one asked for by the way, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.440 no well, no one ever asked for it, but it happens. 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.640 And so here it is an entire episode devoted to 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:04.320 the the interesting science of of cutting one as it were. 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.000 You said that with a question mark. I think it's no, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.440 it's definitely interesting science. I think it comes down to 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.880 the individual listener. I mean, what, what is your individual 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.800 relationship with gas and A? Are you the type of 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.280 person who is repelled enough to where no amount of 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:23.080 interesting science is really going to make you respect flateut 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:25.720 in any way? Or do you? Or do you? Are 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.280 you already totally on board? And in science, the coding 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.680 of science can only make flateus all the more exciting. 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.440 My feeling is that everybody does it, so everybody should 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.360 have an interest in it. Well, everybody does it, but 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.880 people do it to different degrees, and people do it 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:45.680 with with varying degrees of pride or or or disgrace. Well. 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.240 As as I've shared before, I come from a various 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.280 schatological family, so this is a topic that has been 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.680 plumbed in the family. I'm not scared to talk about it. 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:57.280 And uh, I feel like there's lots of really great 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:02.320 information here, in particular this idea of this fire breathing dragon, 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.600 and this is fascinating to me. This was in Mary 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.960 Richard's Gulp. She spoke with a herpetologist, steven S Corp, 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.160 who became fixated on the question of why a python 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.800 or a boa has an unusually large see Okay, so 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.000 I see someone like this little digestive pouch. It's near 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.359 the colon and normally you see it implant eating animals, 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.159 and so he became obsessed with it. Why why which 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.120 is a python have this? So he tried to figure 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.680 out the role of the season, whether or not it 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:34.719 was just there, to break down the plant material in 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:39.039 the animal that the python had just ingested. Um, and 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.799 he began to actually measure the amount of hydrogen coming 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.360 out of a python. Example, like what it was exhaling. 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.200 Affort was given a bunch of rats to eat, okay, 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.080 So he did that with something called a chromatograph, and 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:56.040 that measured the amount of hydrogen alright. What he actually 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.120 found out, though, was that the amount of hydrogen that 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.200 was being exhaled by these creatures was enormous. And I 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:08.800 think about this hydrogen concentration is flammable. These guys and 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:13.440 gals were exhaling something about okay, so what does any 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.240 of us have to do with belching or gas or 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:19.520 inflate us. Well, it turns out Seaquar has this really 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:24.919 great theory that early Man would stumble across, say, a 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.800 python that had just or was in the middle of 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.719 digesting a gazelle, and so as you know, the python 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.640 would be useless and trying to defend itself. Corrects just 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:40.320 eating this huge meal. Bloated. It's not gonna immediately runoff. 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.040 I never rum for another one, right, So early man says, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.039 easy food. I've got dinner tonight. I have two things 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.080 for dinner tonight, right, I think that Mary Rich had 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:54.400 described it as Neanderthal for Duncan. Okay, so early man 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.760 or woman hauls us off to a campsite, there's a fire, 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.200 someone is being you know, joyful, and they began to say, 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:06.120 step on this python's head or they kick it, and 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.680 what happens. A huge flood of this hydrogen just rolls 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:15.880 out of the mouth, meets the fire, and then and 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.920 then you have a fire breathing reptile. Yeah. So she 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.440 course says, think about the thousands and thousands of years 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.679 of these tales of bringing down a fire breathing giant 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:27.640 to your campsite, because I could see, on one hand, 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.440 someone could be like, whoa that thing can can breathe fire? 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:32.839 I was really I was. I was really lucky that 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.599 I didn't get toasted back there, or they'd see what 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.120 happened and they realized, well, this thing doesn't actually breathe fire, 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:39.680 but it sure didn't look like it. And I'm going 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:41.920 to claim that it does because I look all the 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.960 more awesome for having killed it. Slay it. Right, and 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.919 I fast forward, you know, fifty years to modern humans 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:50.880 in eight year olds, all around camp fires trying to 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.320 light their farts, right, there. We have a long tradition 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.360 of this relationship with gas and man. Yeah, anybody who's 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.679 read Mary Roaches Packing from Mars book about the space 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.520 program and human space exploration. Uh Now, so there's a 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.400 there's a lot of scatological content in here, because you're 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:11.280 talking about sending humans and their digestive systems up into 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.160 a strange environment that doesn't necessarily play by the rules, 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:15.960 and at the very least is contained within a very 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:19.600 small space, and inevitably you have astronauts that are going 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.400 to pass gas and uh. I believe it was measured 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:24.240 out to be like three coke cans worth of worth 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.600 of gas is coming out. So there were a couple 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:32.240 of interesting bits they're involving NASA research. One was a 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:36.200 quest of by um Edwin Murphy UH in an attempt 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.400 to find what what the ideal fart profile for an 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.040 anstro NOTT would be UM and basically they wanted a 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.360 little or no methane or hydrogen, because, as we just 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.920 touched on, hydrogen is explosive and methane is not desirable either. 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.880 But in his work, this guy Murphy had apparently encountered 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.320 one ideal astronaut candidate and then this is the quote 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.000 of special interest for further research was the subject who 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:04.640 produced essentially no flateut on one grams dry weight of beans, 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.880 as opposed to the average gut, which will during a 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.520 peak of flash ones period five or six hours post 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.120 being consumption passed anywhere from one to almost three cups 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:18.560 of latest per hour. So, uh, that is particularly interesting. 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:20.880 Interesting not only because NASA that you know wants that 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.480 ideal fart profile for an astronaut, or or that you 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.400 know you would given the chance, but that there are 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:32.360 individuals that are almost non farthers, which is interesting. It 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:38.360 is amazing to me because I mean, presumably again everybody 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:40.920 does this, and I do think it's very kind of NASA, 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.800 by the way, to try to recruit people who don't 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.600 do it so much, because, as we discussed in our 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.520 Emotions in Space episode, you can get dicey up there, 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:52.600 and if you're next to someone who keeps putt putting, 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:55.760 you know, for six months straight, that that can make 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:03.479 things very tense. So let's talk about fart What is it? Well, basically, 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:05.679 the act of farting, of course, is the means by 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.959 which the body rids the colon of unwanted gas. And 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.800 by virtue of that unwanted pressure, you have this gas 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.840 that builds up and the average person releases between five 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.480 and two thousand milli liters of this per day. But 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.560 but yeah, what does it consist of? Well, about its 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:28.360 carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane and go again, 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.600 varying degrees of that depending on the particular fart parton 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.440 because some people don't produce methane. I think it's like 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.600 only one third of us produce methane yep. And most 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.520 of these gases are either swallowed inadvertently when you're eating 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.000 your food or released from the food as it is digested. 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:47.600 And uh, it's amazing because when it's in your body 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:49.640 it is odorless, and we don't think of it as 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.839 being odorless. Right. And the other key thing that of 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.719 the ingredients that I just listed that is odorless, all 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.240 the hydrogen, the methane, oxygen, all of it, that is 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:03.480 not the odor using content. It is that that is 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:05.640 responsible for the smell. Yeah, we'll get to that one 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.760 percent in a bit. Yeah, spend such a political term 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.920 in days. One percent. That's kind of funny to the 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.120 whole system exactly. Um, So, as you had mentioned we 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.240 do expel quite a bit of it. That the man 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.960 who inspired really thoughtful study of how much we expel 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.200 and even excessive gas is a man who in nine 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:30.160 complained of a five year epic bout of the twots 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:34.880 he Um. He contacted gas from entrologist Michael Levitt, and 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.439 in order to study the man, Lovett had to create 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.480 a baseline of normal flattist output so or flatists, I 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:46.199 should say, he recruited volunteers to keep flat too, graphic logs, 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:51.240 logs of gas activity, recording every stirring in every output. 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.600 He prefers that actually, but he did, and others have 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:59.720 relied on um studies that use a rectal tube in 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.880 collection syringes to determine average output. That is year old 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.400 way of trying to figure out how much people are expelling. 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:13.439 So basically the the farting in a jar scenario. Yeah, 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:16.560 but a little bit more foolproof and a lot more 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.000 going on, and the syringes there just to extract the 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.520 molecules and then to to figure out what sort of 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:26.360 molecules are in there. Um. These days, hydrogen output is 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.640 measured in the breath because a fixed percentage of hydrogen 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.520 produced in the colon, is absorbed into the blood, and 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:36.840 when it reaches the lungs, it's exhaled. Now, what he 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:39.800 found was that this man was passing gas thirty four 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.920 to forty two times a day. Okay, the baseline average 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:47.600 here of the humans who doesn't have any lactose intolerance 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.079 problems is about fourteen to twenty times a day in 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:54.840 case you're wondering. So the problem that they've finally figured 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.320 out is that he was lactose intolerant. And as we 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.199 learned before, lactose does not get broken down for some 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.040 people in the digestive excuse me, in the small intestines 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:08.120 hangs out in the colon, and then you have other 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.520 bacteria which we're breaking that down, and then you've got 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.440 the waste product of that bacteria, and you've got a 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.480 bunch of bunch of bunch of hydrogen being produced there. Yes, 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.680 of course, we're talking about humans as a whole in 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:23.080 regards to UH to flate us. But you can't help 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.640 but get into gender scenarios when you start thinking about 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:27.280 In fact, one of the articles that we were looking 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.600 at UH the art, the author made a point of 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.360 saying that men as as a whole. And she's really 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.160 generalizing here and painting with a very broad brush, and 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.240 I skilled her for it that all men are just 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.840 enthusiastic about their gas and just love it and crave 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.840 it and and laugh at it all the time. Yeah, 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.800 and model it. Really, I am not one of those men. 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.560 Like maybe that is the more baseline relationship between men 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:56.079 and fart, but I, for my own self, I don't 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.800 engage that style of humor. For the most part, I 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.080 will laugh at a fart joke if it is well 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:05.520 crafted um or in some way, you know, insightful. Um. 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.880 There have been occasionally they'll get me, like the Pristance. 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.240 There was a Sarah Silverman Show episode that was very 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.880 far heavy. She's she likes the farts. Yeah, and occasionally 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.400 that will work. I mean it's it's the right fart shop. 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.720 But as a whole, I do not. I'm more of 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:22.360 a stereotypical If you're gonna go with these stereotypes, I'm 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.800 more of a stereotypical woman when it comes to fart 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:30.199 gags and in self gas production than a stereotypical man. Okay, 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:31.920 so what I'm hearing is that you don't have a 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:36.480 cellar full of darts. No, I do not. Okay, all right, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:38.880 this is good um. And it's interesting that you bring 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.559 out the stereotypes because you know, if it's were the 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.000 Victorian age, we would say, oh, well, women just don't 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.840 produce gas at all, right, it wouldn't even be a question. 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.280 But we do have data on it, and it turns 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:54.760 out that women have are seemed to be expelling more 0:13:54.800 --> 0:14:00.480 gas than men as measured by the hydrogen exhaled. But 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.839 Mary Roach questions this and says in her book, could 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.920 it be that the suppression of gas could lead to 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:14.280 a higher input of hydrogen exhalation? So maybe if you're 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:16.839 going with the stereotypical um, I almos, dont want to 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:19.280 say stereotypical female, but let's say, let's go with if 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:24.520 you're going with a fart avoidant person like myself, then 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.000 they are going to be less inclined to just let 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.240 it rip whenever the mood hits them. Right, So if 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.560 you suppress it, then you're going to absorb more of 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:35.240 it through your bloodstream and then you're going to exhale mark. Oh, 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.200 so the way you're kind of reversing it and farting 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.920 into your body, into your bloods you're just breath farting, okay, right, 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:45.720 and that makes it really a lovely thought, doesn't it. Yeah, 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:48.240 I think about that next time you you give your 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.240 significant other nice little kiss. Yeah, you know, I I do. 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:54.920 I should add one point about that ladies and farting. 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.040 I did work in a newspaper once and an individual 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.400 in the front office was terminated for engaging in a 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.520 farting contest with a with a with a customer. It 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:08.160 was it was quite understand it. It seems like it 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.680 was mutual farting. So I guess it was just like, hey, 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:12.800 this is a we're going to make an example of you. 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.160 We just fart with the customer. Maybe, you know, there 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:17.000 could have been some other politics involved, or maybe it 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:18.840 was just kind of this unwritten rule where if your 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:23.040 customer comes in and celebrates his or her farts, that's fine, 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:25.960 but then you were not supposed to then engage with 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.840 them in a contest of farts or you know, it's 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.280 it's kind of like it's it's okay, the customer uses 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:34.600 foul language to a point, but you're in then not 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.800 supposed to engage them in that kind of behavior. I guess, well, 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.720 maybe maybe she showed him up. Maybe she shamed him 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:42.680 and they lost a customer because of it. Was this 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:47.040 a gastrontrology office, No, this was a newspaper with We 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.640 didn't even have a flatest section, you know, just business 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.720 and sports. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that I can 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:55.360 recover from that story. I feel like I need time 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:57.840 to think about that and chuckle. But we must go on, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.840 so I'm just gonna chuckle about that later. Um, all right, 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:05.720 so let's talk about this or should we take a break? 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:08.560 Oh yeah, let's take a break. Why not. When we 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:10.680 come back, we will discuss the one percent of the 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.440 fart that is responsible for the smell. We'll talk about 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.120 extraordinary cases of flateust. We'll talk about people who have 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.720 elevated um passing gas to an art form, and also 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.320 the big question, if you're in microgravity, can you propel 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:40.600 yourself across a space ship just by virtue of your own? Uh? Flateus? Alright, 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:46.960 we're back. So, as we've discussed of FLATEUS is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.160 and methane. And uh these are coming from stuff that 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.200 either gases that are inadvertently swallowed or it's released from 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.480 the food as we're digesting it. But none of it 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.720 produces the signature odors and it varies certainly, as we 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.840 can attest to. None of these elements contribute to the odor. 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.240 Is just a tiny one that makes the gas so foul, 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:14.040 that's right, that creates that singular bouquet of smell. Micros 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.120 really live for the most part in the colon, where 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:20.359 they attack and consume undigested food and in turn generate 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.960 their own waste products. So in the case of microorganisms, 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.440 waste usually means gas, and in the case of these 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.600 microorganism organisms, that gas can be the really ripe stuff, 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:38.919 usually molecules containing sulfur like dimethyl sulfide and method methyl um. 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.199 These are waste products that ferment and they build up 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:44.480 to a sufficient level and then they're released with the 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.040 rest of the gas in the bowels. And by the way, 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:48.800 we talked about this before, the birth of a fart 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:53.800 happens when uh, you're stretch receptors um in your colon 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.360 send a signal to your brain, Hey, I'm having some discomfort, 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.320 and then this fincter is loosened up and and and 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.439 the message maybe when you get a chance, please do 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.600 something about this or maybe this is really important. So 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.639 the next time you even have like a heavy thought 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.760 in the back of your head, um, we're gonna just 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:16.400 go ahead and let it go, even a heavy Yeah, yeah, 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.960 that's right. The brain will sit there and respond and say, Okay, 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.040 now you gotta tampa down, sorry, spincter, or yep, we're 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:27.840 overloaded here alright. So what brave soul figured out the 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:32.520 scent profile of flatus. Well, the same Michael Levitt who 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:36.320 helped to determine the output of late us also studies 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:41.480 the qualities of gas. These smell profiles, he recruited volunteers 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:45.520 to detect the three main elements of a heart so 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.919 hydrogen sulfide, which is described as the scent of rotten 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:54.800 eggs uh meth and methiel that is described as rotting vegetation, 0:18:55.320 --> 0:19:00.359 and dimethyl sulfide, which is oddly described as sweet mhm. Yes. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.600 So he didn't do this as a cruel joke. I mean, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.040 he wasn't just trying to you know, terrorize people with smells. 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.520 He wanted to see if the noxiousness of the scent 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:14.280 would correlate with the combined concentrations of these three types 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.840 of sulfur gases and it did. So the best part 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:20.960 of this, all this information is he took the data 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:26.160 and he reversed engineer to fart so he could use 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.560 the combined concentrations in other scenarios. Would would it be 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.480 safe to call this a frank and fart? Yes, it 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.119 would be absolutely Um it's a frank and fart. And 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:39.360 he wanted to figure out the absorptive properties of charcoal 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.760 underpants or seat pads, which, by the way, is of 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.879 interest to the airline industry. Which makes sense, right, I 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:49.960 think that I said, go, airline industry, put charcoal in 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.600 the seat pad. Any degree to which you can cut 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.080 down on the on the amount of flatus in that 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.160 enclosed space on a long flight, the better, Yeah, exactly. 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.520 In speaking of a long fight or a spacewalk, NASA 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.399 actually has used filters in the air circulation in space 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:11.639 suits with charcoal to help bind sulfur and then prevent 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:14.119 the astronauts from getting drive by farted every time the 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.720 air is recirculated. Yeah, because if they build up enough 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.520 along enough space walk, then fart madness ensues. I've heard 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:22.879 about fart madness, isn't earth. There are a lot of 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.560 I was looking on snopes to see if there were 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:30.320 any particular urban legends related to the farting of note, 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.560 and one of them was this bit that occasionally circulates 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.359 an emails about a man who who died because he 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:39.399 farted under the covers and uh and had the covers 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.880 up over his head. But that's just complete malarkey. That's 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.960 just a Dutch Oven. Yes, so so yeah, so death 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.560 by by death by by Dutch Oven not really a thing. Yeah, 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:51.840 And you can't try to, I mean, just for fun 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.439 Dutch Oven astronauts, right, No, No, I mean they go 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.320 through enough in the training. I'm sure they were, like, 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.199 you know, after you've been in that spinny thing than 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.680 I mean, we've all seen the right stuff. They went 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:06.080 through a lot of horrible things to to prove themselves 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:07.960 and to and to you know, to get their bodies 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:10.760 in shape and prepare themselves for this this experience in orbit. 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:12.679 So and keep in mind that the air in their 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:15.840 space suits is actually recirculated three times a minute. So 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.960 now another interesting bit from Mary Roach's book, Packing for Mars. 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:23.360 She talked to an astronaut by the name of Roger Crouch, 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.360 and he was particularly interested in the idea of propelling 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.320 yourself through a microgravity environment like aboard the space station 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:36.040 via your own farts, and he said that the mass 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.800 and velocity of the expelled gas is very small compared 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:40.960 to the mass of the human body. So he tested 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.960 it out found that it produced no real effect, though 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.679 he did, uh, he did have this theory that the 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:50.960 underpants and the pants might be um prohibiting the expulsion 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:53.160 of gas, and so he but he did not get 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:57.440 to test this naked, but he apparently has lingering thoughts 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:02.720 that that nude farting in Mike gravity would potentially give 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:04.800 you at least a little push across the cabin. Yeah, 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:06.720 that really is not going to win the hearts and 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.960 minds of your fellow astronauts or space if you just 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:14.159 drop trial and then try to propel yourself with your 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.359 own parts. Can you imagine the dudas doing like the 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:19.040 crying in space videos and all the different viral videos 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.680 Colonel have Feld, Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if he's 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.280 on board for this. That's gonna be a big shock 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.760 when that when that YouTube video rolls out, that might 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:31.360 be the one that never really makes it to be right. So, though, 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.440 if you were going to do that experiment without underpants 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.040 and really truly tested, you would want to eat the 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:41.760 gassiest inducing foods that you could. And it turns out 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.800 that the most eruptive edibles are beans, carrots, raisins, bananas 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.800 just odd to me onions not odd milk and milk 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:53.879 products for the very reasons that we talked before about 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.520 milk being hard to digest and break down as opposed 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:03.240 to something like um, what say, meat, fish, great berries, 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.600